The smoke alarm went off again for no reason this morning.  I consulted Google, and it informed me smoke alarms sometime do this when they’re at the end of their lifespan.  They’re not meant to last beyond ten years, and when I checked mine I found it had been made in 2003!  So I took it down from the ceiling and made a mental note to buy another one.

I headed out to Ballina today, with my first stop at the Thursday Plantation.  This was the world’s first commercial tea tree plantation, founded by a man called Eric White.  There was an issue with getting the land he wanted – the local government debated on whether it give it him for years, and when he finally got the call saying it was his, it was a Thursday, hence the name Thursday Plantation.

I had a look at all their tea tree products, and had some lunch at the little café – avocado, chicken and cheese toasted sandwich, yum!

Then I went to check out the tea tree maze.  The entrance was between these two interesting-looking pillars.

Maybe they’re not supposed to be breasts, but I can’t think of what else they could be.

And the trees were more bushes then actual trees – you could clearly see over them.

It made the maze much easier than it could have been.  The correct path took you through four star-shaped parts in the maze, arranged in the image of the Southern Cross.

Hard to see the star pattern from the ground though.

Thursday Plantation also sponsors sculpture competitions, and there was some artwork hidden here and there throughout the maze:

And look what else I found:

Red-browed finches!  These little guys were concentrated in the northwest part of the maze, and every time I turned a corner a small cloud of them would fly away from me.  Not very far, or I couldn’t have got that video, but they’d just flutter into the next path over or under a hedge.

I found these hedge-monsters at the end of the maze:

I think they’re supposed to be dragons, but I can’t really be sure.

Now it was time for the rainforest walk – just a little stretch of regenerating rainforest that you could take a quick stroll through.

Be honest with yourself; you knew that was coming.

They had some very interesting plants:

There were sculptures dotted around the place as well.

I could hear a few birds as well:

I saw a few superb fairy-wrens and a white-browed scrubwren, but they were so deep in the underbrush I didn’t manage to get good pictures (or videos) of them.  I did find our usual photogenic friend:

There were two of them hanging around this little bend in the path, and I was happily watching and taking photos, until one of them swooped to a little knot of debris between two vines, then swooped off again as something moved near its feet.  I crept a little closer, and what did I find?

The nest was at shoulder-height, just off the path, which was pretty surprising – there must be a fair amount of foot traffic going past the nest, so I would have thought it would be set farther back or higher up or something.  Or it could be deliberate; maybe they don’t like these babies, and are hoping the humans will take them away.

I didn’t take the chicks but I did take a video:

Just a few steps along, I found this one:

No idea what this bird is – it doesn’t seem to match any description or photos of NSW birds.  It’s probably a female or juvenile of some insect-eating species.

I came across this door in the middle of the path.  Just sitting there, with no little plaque to say it was an art installation or anything.  Only slightly worried I was about to be transported into another world, I opened it.

No Narnia.  Ah well, maybe next time.

I soon reached the end of the forest walk, marked with a circle of stones and strange sculpture:

I saw a dark bird land in a tree on the way back.  I thought it was a crow, but zoomed in for a closer look anyway, and I was glad I did.  Definitely not a crow:

Then I headed off to the Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum.  They had a lot of naval artefacts and a whole heap of model ships.

And finally, what I came here to see: La Balsas raft!

You’re probably wondering what the hell this is.  Well, a man called Vital Alsar and eleven companions set out to cross the Pacific Ocean from Ecuador to Australia in three wooden rafts, in an attempt to prove that ancient civilizations of America could have traversed the Pacific in large numbers, rather than stray fishermen being carried across by chance.

 

The rafts were built from female balsa trees harvested at the full moon, to ensure sap content was the highest possible so the wood would be as water-resistant as it could be.  They were built entirely from wood and rope – no metal was used in the construction.

They’d planned the land at Mooloolaba, but the weather ensured they drifted all the way to Ballina and into the shipping lanes before they were declared a shipping hazard and were towed to the shore.

You can read more on the Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_Alsar_Pacific_raft_expeditions#La_Balsa

It might be lazy to just give you the link like that, but I’m not going to type out all the little details!

On the way out of the museum, I spotted another mysterious bird:

You’d think those colours would be very distinctive, but it doesn’t seem to match any species I can find.

And of course, no visit to Ballina would be complete without seeing the Big Prawn:

Funnily enough, it was right next to Bunnings, which I popped into to pick up a new smoke alarm.  But because the one in the caravan was so old, I couldn’t find one with similar dimensions, so I had to unscrew the bracket of the old one and then drill a new hole for the new one.

After that, I felt like I’d earned some comfort food, so I had a baked potato for dinner.  If all goes well tomorrow, I’ll be off to Nightcap national park!